Carl Sandburg (1878 – 1967)
American poet, historian, novelist, balladeer and folklorist.
Look out how you use proud words.
When you let proud words go, it is not easy to call them back.
They wear long boots, hard boots.
There are some people who can receive a truth by no other way than to have their understanding shocked and insulted.
The little girl saw her first troop parade and asked,
"What are those?"
"Soldiers."
"What are soldiers?"
"They are for war. They fight and each tries to kill as many of the other side as he can."
The girl held still and studied.
"Do you know ... I know something?"
"Yes, what is it you know?"
"Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come."
The name of an iron man goes round the world.
It takes a long time to forget an iron man.
Yesterday is done. Tomorrow never comes. Today is here. If you don't know what to do, sit still and listen. You may hear something. Nobody knows.
We may pull apart the petals of a rose or make chemical analysis of its perfume, but the mystic beauty of its form and odor is still a secret, locked in to where we have no keys.
Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders.
Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar.
Let me pry loose old walls.
Let me lift and loosen old foundations.
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work —
I am the grass; I cover all.
Time is the coin of your life. You spend it. Do not allow others to spend it for you.
Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during a moment.